Identifying and Advocating Best Practices in the Criminal Justice System. A Texas-Centric Examination of Current Conditions, Reform Initiatives, and Emerging Issues with a Special Emphasis on Capital Punishment.

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Wednesday, 09 April 2014

Texas Execution Set for Wednesday

Texas is set to carry out its sixth execution of 2014, tonight in Huntsville. It would be the 514th post-Furman Texas execution since 1982, and the 275th execution under the administration of Gov. Rick Perry. Texas is responsible for more than 37% of the nation's post-Furman executions.

On Wednesday, Hernandez-Llanas, 44, was set for lethal injection that would make him the second Texas prisoner within a week executed with a supply of pentobarbital newly obtained from a source Texas prison officials have refused to identify.

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected appeals from another Texas death row inmate, Tommy Lynn Sells, whose attorneys argued unsuccessfully they needed the name of the drug supplier to verify its potency to determine he wouldn’t be subjected to unconstitutional pain and suffering. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice contends the information needs to be withheld to keep the new drug provider from threats of violence from death penalty opponents.

Sells quietly went to his death Thursday with the new drug.

Hernandez-Llanas also was a plaintiff in Sells’ lawsuit. On Monday, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals lifted a reprieve he won from a lower court, putting his punishment back on track. Attorneys for the condemned prisoner declined to appeal because the Supreme Court turned down the same request from Sells.

There have been 15 executions in American death penalty states this year; a total of 1,374 post-Furman executions since 1977.

Houston's KPFT-FM will host Execution Watch on the web and its HD radio broadcast signal beginning at 6:00 p.m. (CDT), this evening.

According to TDCJ, Texas state district courts have set three additional execution dates.

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The StandDown Texas Project

The StandDown Texas Project was organized in 2000 to advocate a moratorium on executions and a state-sponsored review of Texas' application of the death penalty.
To stand down is to go off duty temporarily, especially to review safety procedures.

Steve Hall

Project Director Steve Hall was chief of staff to the Attorney General of Texas from 1983-1991; he was an administrator of the Texas Resource Center from 1993-1995. He has worked for the U.S. Congress and several Texas legislators. Hall is a former journalist.